Afghanistan’s First Female Mayor Speaks Out as Others Can’t | Opinion

In 2008, when I was appointed mayor of the Daykundi province in Afghanistan, the national and international media rushed to interview me. I was not only the first female mayor in the history of the country, but I belonged to the Afghanistan’s most persecuted ethnic group, the Hazara.
The headlines were loud and heavy on hype: women were being given the chance to take leadership responsibility, and more would have the chance to play important roles in society. And it did happen. During six years in office, I saw women’s presence becoming more visible in both private and public sectors, especially in education and politics.
The tragedy is that the women who spearheaded these changes in an extreme patriarchal society and rose to the positions of mayor, governor, and even government ministers are now all exiled. There is a genocidal campaign against the Hazara under the Taliban’s authority.
In recent years, just prior to the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, more than half of the children enrolled in school were girls. Today, those schools are empty of girls. They are barred from attending beyond 6th grade. Streets and alleys that were once filled with jubilant schoolgirls are deserted. It is as if they have vanished.
Government offices that tolerated the presence of female civil servants are now completely empty of women. During the past 20 years, women and girls who played a significant role in the security apparatus, including in Afghanistan’s National Army and police, are now either dead or in the Taliban’s prisons being gang-raped. Many others are in hiding inside the country. Only a few could flee it.
I have participated in numerous conferences, gatherings and meetings where Afghan women in the nation’s diaspora are trying to find a safe space to share their stories of displacement and a find a sense of belonging. We share our stories and grief. We weep together for the lives that were lost, the country that we lost, and the hope that vanished into thin air.
We mourn our inability to help our fellow women and girls who are suffering under the Taliban, but most of all we feel anger at the United States and the international community for their betrayal of Afghan women.
Half of the population of a country is barred from public life and the world doesn’t do anything about it. How could this be possible in the 21st century?
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, when the war on terror was waged, the liberation of women in Afghanistan was part of the pretext. Almost 20 years later, on Aug. 15, 2021, that pretext proved false. In order to find a quick exit, Western forces dealt with the same people they had overthrown 20 years before, completely forgetting Afghan women.
The betrayal was unforgiveable. The women of Afghanistan will never forget.
It is more than three years since the Taliban’s takeover of my country and they have brought unspeakable suffering through their draconian laws. While previously women had been barred from leaving their homes unaccompanied by a male relative, now their very voices have been banned from public spaces.
How could this happen to women in the 21st century? And how has the international community responded to the Taliban’s harsh treatment of women?
All of these blows to human rights have been met by the international community with muted displeasure. Even the United Nations has seemingly stopped supporting Afghan women. In June, in a third meeting between the Taliban and envoys from 22 countries, the UN failed to include Afghan women.
This is unacceptable. It is obvious that women must regain their rightful place in Afghan society, alongside men, not subject to them. Will the international community help them to do it?
Azra Jafari, Afghanistan’s first female mayor (Nili, Daikundi Province, Dec 2008- Jan 2014), was born in 1978 in the Ghor province of Afghanistan. Azra began her work as a women’s rights and social activist at the age of 17 when she and a friend established a non-profit school for Afghan refugees living in Iran.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.